Ecma International () is a

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

standards organization A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...

for information and communication systems. It acquired its current name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities. As a consequence, the name is no longer considered an acronym and no longer uses full capitalization. The organization was founded in 1961 to standardize computer systems in Europe. Membership is open to large and small companies worldwide that produce, market, or develop computer or communication systems, and have interest and experience in the areas addressed by the group's technical bodies. It is located in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

Aims

Ecma aims to develop

standards Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object t ...

and technical reports to facilitate and standardize the use of information communication technology and consumer electronics; encourage the correct use of standards by influencing the environment in which they are applied; and publish these standards and reports in electronic and printed form. Ecma publications, including standards, can be freely copied by all interested parties without copyright restrictions. The development of standards and technical reports is done in co-operation with the appropriate national, European, and international organizations. Unlike national standardization bodies, Ecma is a membership-based organization. It takes pride in the resulting "business-like" approach to standards, claimed to lead to better standards in less time, thanks to a less bureaucratic process focused on achieving results by consensus. Ecma has actively contributed to worldwide standardization in information technology and telecommunications. More than 400 Ecma Standards and 100 Technical Reports have been published, more than of which have also been adopted as international standards and/or technical reports. The member list of Ecma International is available on its website. Its members include IT companies, IT trade associations, universities, foundations and public institutions.

Standards

Ecma International is responsible for several standards, including: *

ECMA-6 ISO/IEC 646 ''Information technology — ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange'', is an ISO/ IEC standard in the field of character encoding. It is equivalent to the ECMA standard ECMA-6 and developed i ...

– 7-bit Coded Character Set (based on

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

), also approved as ISO/IEC 646 * ECMA-35 – Character Code Structure and Extension Techniques, also approved as ISO/IEC 2022 *

ECMA-48 ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape cha ...

– Control Functions for Coded Character Sets, also approved as ISO/IEC 6429 * ECMA-107 –

FAT12 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default file system for the MS-DOS and Windows 9x operating systems. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on ...

FAT16 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default file system for the MS-DOS and Windows 9x operating systems. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on Ha ...

file system * ECMA-119 –

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

volume and filestructure (later known as

ISO 9660 ISO 9660 (also known as ECMA-119) is a file system for optical disc media. The file system is an international standard available from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Since the specification is publicly available, im ...

) * ECMA-130 –

"Yellow Book" format * ECMA-262 –

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a standard for scripting languages, including JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript. It is best known as a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different web browsers. It is stan ...

Language Specification (based on

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

) * ECMA-334 – C# Language Specification * ECMA-335 – Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) * ECMA-341 – Environmental design considerations for electronic products * ECMA-363 – Universal 3D File Format * ECMA-367 – Eiffel: Analysis, design and programming Language (See Eiffel programming language) *

ECMA-372 C++/CLI is a variant of the C++ programming language, modified for Common Language Infrastructure. It has been part of Visual Studio 2005 and later, and provides interoperability with other .NET languages such as C Sharp (programming language), ...

–

C++/CLI C++/CLI is a variant of the C++ programming language, modified for Common Language Infrastructure. It has been part of Visual Studio 2005 and later, and provides interoperability with other .NET languages such as C#. Microsoft created C++/CLI ...

Language Specification * ECMA-376 –

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version ...

(later known as ISO/IEC 29500) * ECMA-377 – Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) Recordable Cartridges * ECMA-378 – Read-Only Memory Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD-ROM) * ECMA-388 –

Open XML Paper Specification Open XML Paper Specification (also referred to as OpenXPS) is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format. Microsoft developed it as the XML Paper Specification (XPS). In June 2009, Ecma International adop ...

* ECMA-402 –

Internationalization API Specification * ECMA-404 –

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

* ECMA-408 – Dart language specification

Java programming language

Although

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

submitted its

Java programming language Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...

to Ecma, Sun subsequently withdrew the submission. Thus, Ecma is not responsible for the standardization of Java.

Office Open XML formats

Ecma is involved in the standardization of the

format based on the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

office document formats by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. The Ecma Office Open XML maintenance process is performed by technical committee 45 (TC45).

Technical committees

The Ecma standards are governed through technical committees assigned to particular areas or topics, such as: * TC39 – responsible for

. * TC45 – responsible for Office Open XML. * TC53 – responsible for ECMAScript Modules for Embedded Systems.

Eco declaration

In Ecma International Standard 370, Ecma joined with the Scandinavian IT Eco Declaration organisation to put forward a guideline for informing consumers about the environmental practices of the manufacturers of ICT and consumer electronics products. The IT Eco Declaration includes information on the environmental practices of the manufacturer as well as product features, such as environmentally conscious design, batteries, acoustic noise, electrical safety, energy consumption, chemical emissions, substances and materials included, and packaging. This makes it easy to compare different suppliers and their products, as they all present the environmental features of their products in the same way, through a common industry standard reporting form.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Information technology organizations based in Europe Organisations based in Geneva Organizations established in 1961 Standards organisations in Switzerland